Erik van Blokland wrote:
>> Users want fonts that work seamlessly - Sometimes it seems we are
>> talking here like "the web" and "the desktop" are two discrete realms
>> and we can have one font format for each realm with little
>> inconvenience to users.
> Bandwidth seperates the realms, and will continue to do so for some
> time. I have a set of fonts in which each weight is 12-15Mb. Works great
> offline, hardly notice them when printing, but they will not play well
> online.
This is a good point, and I think some form of compression for fonts on
the web will benefit everyone. But there's nothing to say that the same
compression couldn't also be used on the desktop. Fonts are getting
bigger, not only in terms of glyph set size but also in complexity of
OpenType Layout tables. Web publishers, ISPs and mobile device makers
are not the only people interested in ways to make fonts take up less
bandwidth, storage space and memory: I already have a customer fussing
about the size of the font footprint in the OS. [The latest version of
the MS VOLT tool optimises the GSUB table precisely to address this
concern about font size.]
> As far as the user experience is concerned, the support questions at
> foundries will show you it is not a seamless world outside the web
> either. OpenType vs. TrueType vs. (yes, still) Type 1 postscript. Mac vs
> windows (still). Support for different scripts, languages, keyboard
> drivers (still), custom encodings (still), proprietary crazy publishing
> systems. Of course every app treats fonts differently (even if they're
> from the same vendor), and often users have no idea what they're doing
> anyway. (not my or your users of course, they are terrific and skilled
> fellows)
Yeah, but I don't think anyone that this is a good situation.
JH